The key point here is the leveraging; the EC R&D funding is ~ 5% of total R&D funding in Europe and the interactions between the EC programme and national programmes are complex - basically politicians try to lever either negatively (if EC funds this area of research or researcher we won't) or positively (if EC funds this we'll fund it too).

The ERC is to fund individual researchers, not teams. It will thus give great prestige to the successful researchers. With am OA self-archiving mandate it will give a leadership to all Europe research unachievable otherwise - i.e. it is a totem. If a (prestigious) researcher with ERC funding does parallel green deposit for ERC then she will also do it for her nationally-funded research - by force of habit if nothing else! The research team around will 'get the habit' too.

Significantly this leadership should also be extended to EIT (European Institute of Technology). This will be ~75% industry funded according to the EC and will involve large numbers of researchers (15-20,000). Of course it is yet to be approved by the parliament but Barrosso (EC president) seems determined to push it through.

Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/26/2007 09:13:00 AM.

The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.